Rem Koolhaas Project on the city
What was the project on the city?
What was Rem Koolhaas' project on the city?
Koolhaas's next landmark publications were a product of his position as professor at Harvard University, in the Design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page Mutations, followed by The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (2002) and The Great Leap Forward (2002). All three books involved Koolhaas's students analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as Lagos in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical - as if Western capitalism and globalization demolish all cultural identity - highlighted in the notion expounded in the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". However, such cynicism can alternatively be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops.  When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of present-day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within his design activities: calling such a condition the 'culture of congestion'. Again, shopping is examined for "intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size, money etc. For example, in his design for the new CCTV headquarters in Beijing (2009), Koolhaas did not opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises, but instead designed a series of volumes which not only tie together the numerous departments onto the nebulous site, but also introduced routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. Through his ruthlessly raw approach, Koolhaas hopes to extract the architect from the anxiety of a dead profession and resurrect a contemporary interpretation of the sublime, however fleeting it may be.  In 2003, Content, a 544-page magazine-style book designed by &&& Creative and published by Koolhaas, gives an overview of the last decade of OMA projects including his designs for the Prada shops, the Seattle Public Library, a plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest city, as well as interviews with Martha Stewart and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. CANNOTANSWER
a product of his position as professor at Harvard University,
Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.

He is seen by some as one of the truly significant architectural thinkers and urbanists of his generation, by others as a self-important iconoclast. In 2000, Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008, Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014.

Early life and career
Remment Koolhaas, usually abbreviated to Rem Koolhaas, was born on 17 November 1944 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, to Anton Koolhaas (1912–1992) and Selinde Pietertje Roosenburg (born 1920). His father was a novelist, critic, and screenwriter. Two documentary films by Bert Haanstra for which his father wrote the scenarios were nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, one won a Golden Bear for Short Film. His maternal grandfather, Dirk Roosenburg (1887–1962), was a modernist architect who worked for Hendrik Petrus Berlage, before opening his own practice. Rem Koolhaas has a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Annabel. His paternal cousin was the architect and urban planner Teun Koolhaas (1940–2007). The family lived consecutively in Rotterdam (until 1946), Amsterdam (1946–1952), Jakarta (1952–1955), and Amsterdam (from 1955).

His father strongly supported the Indonesian cause for autonomy from the colonial Dutch in his writing. When the war of independence was won, he was invited over to run a cultural programme for three years and the family moved to Jakarta in 1952. "It was a very important age for me," Koolhaas recalls "and I really lived as an Asian."

In 1969, Koolhaas co-wrote The White Slave, a Dutch film noir, and later wrote an unproduced script for American soft-porn king Russ Meyer.

He was a journalist in 1963 at age 19 for the Haagse Post  before starting studies in architecture in 1968 at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, followed, in 1972, by further studies with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, followed by studies at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City.

Koolhaas first came to public and critical attention with OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the office he founded in 1975 together with architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas's wife) Madelon Vriesendorp in London. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students, Zaha Hadid – who would soon go on to achieve success in her own right. An early work which would mark their difference from the then dominant postmodern classicism of the late 1970s, was their contribution to the Venice Biennale of 1980, curated by Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, titled "Presence of the Past". Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; the façades by , Frank Gehry and OMA were the only ones that did not employ Post-Modern architecture motifs or historical references.

Other early critically received (yet unbuilt) projects included the Parc de la Villette, Paris (1982) and the residence for the Prime Minister of Ireland (1979), as well as the Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992). These schemes would attempt to put into practice many of the findings Koolhaas made in his book Delirious New York (1978), which was written while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, directed by Peter Eisenman.

Architectural theory

Delirious New York
Koolhaas's book Delirious New York set the pace for his career. Koolhaas analyzes the "chance-like" nature of city life: "The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape" "Rem Koolhaas...defined the city as a collection of 'red hot spots'." (Anna Klingmann).  As Koolhaas himself has acknowledged, this approach had already been evident in the Japanese Metabolist Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.

A key aspect of architecture that Koolhaas interrogates is the "Program": with the rise of modernism in the 20th century the "Program" became the key theme of architectural design. The notion of the Program involves "an act to edit function and human activities" as the pretext of architectural design: epitomised in the maxim form follows function, first popularised by architect Louis Sullivan at the beginning of the 20th century. The notion was first questioned in Delirious New York, in his analysis of high-rise architecture in Manhattan. An early design method derived from such thinking was "cross-programming", introducing unexpected functions in room programmes, such as running tracks in skyscrapers. More recently, Koolhaas unsuccessfully proposed the inclusion of hospital units for the homeless into the Seattle Public Library project (2003).

Project on the city
Koolhaas' next publications were a by-product of his position as professor at Harvard University, in the Design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page Mutations, followed by The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (2002) and The Great Leap Forward (2002).

All three books published student work analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as Lagos in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical, – as if Western capitalism and globalization demolish all cultural identity – highlighted in the notion expounded in the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". Perhaps such caustic cynicism can be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops. It does, however, demonstrate one of the architect's characteristic devices for deflecting criticism: attack the client or subject of study after completing the work.

When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of present-day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within his design activities: calling such a condition the ‘culture of congestion’. Again, shopping is examined for "intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size, money etc.

In 2003, Content, a 544-page magazine-style book designed by &&& Creative and published by Koolhaas, gives an overview of the last decade of OMA projects including his designs for the Prada shops, the Seattle Public Library, a plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest city, as well as interviews with Martha Stewart and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Volume Magazine
In 2005, Rem Koolhaas co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman. Volume Magazine – the collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY) – is a dynamic experimental think tank devoted to the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. It goes beyond architecture's definition of ‘making buildings’ and reaches out for global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures, and creating environments to live in. The magazine stands for a journalism which detects and anticipates, is proactive and even pre-emptive – a journalism which uncovers potentialities, rather than covering done deals.

Buildings and projects
In the late nineties he worked on the design for the new headquarters for Universal.

Indeed, online marketing and propaganda has been a hallmark of OMA's rise in the current century. It has also led to pointed criticism, such as the critique by New York Magazine critic Justin Davidson, who found the 2020 Guggenheim exhibition Countryside, the Future "mildly amusing if it weren’t such terrible waste — of attention, of gallery square footage, of resources, talent, and expertise. Bored with being an architect and building things, Koolhaas lets his fingertips graze important topics, genuine insights, and actual lives. He treats them all as ironic bric-a-brac, meaningless souvenirs of his meanderings through a fragile world. How frustrating that the Guggenheim couldn’t force a little more intellectual rigor on this romp."

Architecture, fashion, and theatre
With his Prada projects, Koolhaas ventured into providing architecture for the fleeting world of fashion and with celebrity-studded cachet: not unlike Garnier's Opera, the central space of Koolhaas' Beverly Hills Prada store is occupied by a massive central staircase, ostensibly displaying select wares, but mainly the shoppers themselves. The notion of selling a brand rather than marketing clothes was further emphasised in the Prada store on Broadway in Manhattan, New York, which had previously been owned by the Guggenheim: the museum signs were not removed during the outfitting of the new store, as if emphasizing the premises as a cultural institution. The Broadway Prada store opened in December 2001, cost €32 million to build, and has 2,300 square meters of retail space.

21st Century Projects

Probably the most costly and celebrated OMA projects of the new century were the massive Central China Television Headquarters Building in Beijing, China, and the new building for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the equivalent of the NASDAQ in China.

In his design for the new CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2009), Koolhaas did not opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises; he patented a "horizontal skyscraper" in the U.S. The building, popularly called "The Big Pants" by Beijing residents, was designed as a series of volumes which attempt to tie together the numerous departments onto the nebulous site, but also introduce routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. An unfortunate incident that highlighted the folly of the circulation scheme (no effective fire egress for people on the upper floors), was the construction fire that nearly destroyed the building and a nearby hotel in 2009.

Personal life
Koolhaas was previously married to Madelon Vriesendorp, an artist who is the mother of his two children, Charlie, a photographer, and Tomas, a filmmaker. Koolhaas divorced Vriesendorp in 2012. He has known his current partner Petra Blaisse, an interior and landscape designer since 1986.

Selected projects
Villa dall’Ava, (Saint-Cloud, 1991)
Nexus World Housing (Fukuoka, 1991)
Kunsthal (Rotterdam, 1992)
Euralille (Lille, 1994)
Educatorium (Utrecht, 1995)
Maison à Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1998)
Embassy of the Netherlands (Berlin, 2003)
McCormick Tribune Campus Center (Chicago, 2003)
Seoul National University Museum of Art (Seoul, 2005) 
Seattle Central Library (Seattle, 2005)
Casa da Música (Porto, 2005)
Dee and Charles Wyly Theater (Dallas, 2009)
CCTV Headquarters, (Beijing, 2012)
De Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 2013)
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2014)
Qatar National Library (Doha, 2017)
Taipei Performing Arts Center (Taipei, 2022)

Bibliography
Project Japan. Metabolism Talks... (2011) (with Hans Ulrich Obrist) 
Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1978) 
S,M,L,XL (1995) 
Serpentine Gallery: 24 Hour Interview Marathon (2007) Living Vivre Leben (1998)Content (2004) 
 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006''; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, Germany 2008

Gallery

See also
Contemporary architecture
World Architecture Survey
List of architects
Koolhaas Houselife

References

External links

 Office for Metropolitan Architecture
 OMA official Facebook page (updated daily)
 OMA official Vimeo channel
 OMA portfolio on Archello.com
 Rem Koolhaas at Harvard University
 
 Urgency 2007: Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman lectures, Canadian Centre for Architecture, June 8, 2007
 Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi, Rotterdam, August 26, 2015, for the exhibition The Other Architect, Canadian Centre for Architecture 
 On Starchitecture
 Koolhaas at Harvard's Ecological Urbanism
 Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (2008 Feature Documentary)
 Rem Koolhaas lecture "Russia for Beginners" at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art: September 15th, 2014
 Rem Koolhaas on Empty Canon

 
1944 births
20th-century Dutch architects
21st-century Dutch architects
Architectural theoreticians
Urban theorists
Deconstructivism
Postmodern architecture
Dutch non-fiction writers
Living people
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty
Dutch urban planners
Architects from Rotterdam
Pritzker Architecture Prize winners
Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal
Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale
Alumni of the Architectural Association School of Architecture
Honorary Fellows of the American Institute of Architects
The Project is the third studio album and major label debut by Canadian country music artist Lindsay Ell. It was released by Stoney Creek Records on August 11, 2017. The Project was the number-one selling country album the week of its release. The album was released in physical format in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2018.

Singles
"Waiting on You", the album's lead single, was released on March 24, 2017 as part of Ell's EP, Worth the Wait. The song was released to American country radio on May 29, 2017.

The second single, "Criminal", was released to American country radio on December 11, 2017.

Promotional singles
"Champagne" was released as the album's first promotional single on July 21, 2017. "Good" was released as the second promotional single on July 28, 2017.

Production
Before recording the album, Ell was worried about what sort of music she wanted to make and brought her concerns to producer Bush. Upon being asked what her favourite album was, she replied with Continuum by John Mayer. Bush then tasked her with recording the entire album by herself in under three weeks so that she could determine what sounds and production elements she liked, resulting in The Continuum Project which was released separately in 2018.

Critical reception
Matt Bjorke of Roughstock wrote that Kristian Bush's production "allowed Lindsay to shine in a way that accentuates every nuanced talent she has as a singer, songwriter and guitarist," and called The Project "a beautiful collection worthy of revisiting time and time again." Cillea Houghton of Sounds Like Nashville praised Ell's artistry, writing that "what makes The Project so compelling is not just the songs themselves, but the fact that they are so unique from one another but still work cohesively."

Commercial performance
The Project debuted at number 40 on the Billboard 200 chart dated September 2, 2017. On the Top Album Sales component chart, the album debuted at number seven. It also debuted at number four on the Top Country Albums chart, and at number one on the Country Album Sales component chart. The album sold 10,000 copies and 1,000 album-equivalent units in its first week.  As of September 2017, the album has sold 14,600 copies in the US.

Track listing

Charts

Release history

References

External links
 

2017 debut albums
Lindsay Ell albums
BBR Music Group albums Charlie Palmer Hotel is a proposed 371-room hotel planned for  of land at Symphony Park in downtown Las Vegas. As of September 2014, the project is on hold. 
The project was  announced by chef Charlie Palmer as a boutique condo hotel in 2006, with groundbreaking scheduled for later that year. In 2007, the proposed location for the project was changed to Symphony Park, and the condominium  was  removed from the project. The opening had initially been scheduled for November 2011, but the start of construction was delayed several times between 2010 and 2014, due to the poor state of the local hotel market.

History

Original project
The Charlie Palmer Hotel was announced by chef Charlie Palmer in April 2006. The project would have included a 35-story boutique condo hotel with 400 to 500 rooms, primarily consisting of studio and one-bedroom units that would range from  to . The project was to be built on the three-acre site of the Golden Palm Hotel, located at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Dean Martin Drive. The project was to cost $400 million, and was scheduled to break ground later in 2006, with its completion expected for mid-2008. Palmer's partners in the project included Marvin Lipschultz, the owner of the property; Bill Richardson, the owner of W.A. Richardson Construction and a former executive for Mandalay Resort Group; and Dan Juba, the principal of the locally based Klai Juba Architects. Adam Tihany, who designed the interior for Palmer's Aureole restaurant in Las Vegas, was also involved in the new project.

Palmer said the project would not include a casino or gambling: "Our focus is on the guest experience, not walking them through a casino and getting them to game." The hotel was to have a sky lounge, event space on the top floor, a night club and cigar bar, and three restaurants, including the first sushi bar to be owned by Palmer. Amenities would include a health spa, a hair salon, sommelier service, and a 24-hour concierge service.

New location
By May 2007, the project's proposed location was moved to Union Park, an undeveloped 61-acre property in downtown Las Vegas that was subsequently renamed Symphony Park. In December 2008, Palmer still planned to proceed with the project, with an opening scheduled for November 2011, to coincide with the opening of the adjacent Smith Center for the Performing Arts. At the time, the project was to consist of 426 rooms; no condominium aspect was specified for the project. The hotel would be located on  of land located north of the Smith Center. Richard Kaufman, the president of City-Core Development and a partner with The Charlie Palmer Group, was involved with the project at that time as a developer.

In February 2010, the Las Vegas City Council allowed Palmer to delay construction for two to four years, due to a poor economy. Construction had been scheduled to begin later that year. Bill Arent, the director of the city's office of business development, said, "We believe this extension is in the best interest of making this project happen. This project was proposed as a hospitality project, a non-gaming hotel. The hospitality market right now in Las Vegas is struggling and is to experience some challenges in a few years to come." Kaufman said, "The idea of this hotel is to bring an experience that I don't think exists in Las Vegas, and really concentrating on the non-gaming person who comes to Las Vegas, whether it's for business or recreation or what have you."

In March 2011, Kaufman said that the project would remain on hold because of the poor hotel economy. Kaufman also confirmed that condominiums were no longer a part of the project. In March 2012, Kaufman said the project did not have a start date, as he and Palmer were waiting for construction costs to decrease and for hotel-room rates to increase so the project could be financially viable. Kaufman said the project could be built in phases, with the first phase to consist of 50 to 100 rooms and a restaurant by Palmer. The project, at that time, was to include an ultimate total of 371 rooms. Kaufman said one problem in progressing the project was the uncertainty of what type of other nearby projects would be constructed at Symphony Park in the future.

In March 2013, the Las Vegas City Council unanimously approved a one-year extension for the start of construction on the project, as Kaufman said room rates had not increased enough for the hotel to operate: "The problem is room rates are low so we need to spend less money because we can't charge more. How do we make it more affordable to build?" Kaufman said a potential solution would be the construction of a 100-room hotel with a restaurant, with the possibility of expanding the project as part of a later second phase.

In September 2013, Palmer confirmed that he still planned to build the hotel but said, "The big question there is what's going to happen around that piece of land. Originally there were nine or 10 projects on the slate, and a lot of them fell out. There's been talk of a stadium on the land adjacent to our property. It's hard to build and spend $200 or $300 million on a project not knowing who your neighbors are going to be". In September 2014, the project was on hold until a decision was made regarding the proposed stadium in Symphony Park.

References

External links
 Official website, archived via the Wayback Machine

Downtown Las Vegas
Proposed buildings and structures in Nevada